the.com/vacuum cleaner
A machine that turns dirt into someone else's problem, filed in a bag.
means An appliance that uses suction to pull dust and debris off floors and surfaces into a bag or canister.
from From Latin vacuus, 'empty,' which gave English 'vacuum' for a space devoid of matter — first a physics term for near-nothingness, then, by the early 1900s, borrowed to name machines that clean by creating a partial vacuum to suck up dirt. Early models were bulky, hand-pumped or belt-driven contraptions; the word stuck even as the devices shrank and went electric.
- origin
- Early models were horse-drawn and parked outside houses
- etymology
- Named for sucking nothing, technically, into itself
- robot irony
- Roombas map your home better than you do
- dust myth
- Most household dust is actually dead skin, not dirt